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Monday, September 6, 2010

OK, so here are two news on period films to bring some glamor of the past days into your Monday: a new, independent film adaptation of the famous Chinese legend of "Mulan" will be directed by Jan De Bont ("Speed", "Twister") and will have Ziyi Zhang in the lead role of a young Chinese woman who joins Chinese army instead of her father in order to fight the country’s invaders. You already know the story from Disney's animated movie from the 90's. The shooting is supposed to start later this Autumn in Shanghai. "Mulan" will be an English language project and De Bont and Ziyi were both brought into the project to attract possible distributors being more famous names to the Western audience. The shooting was on hold for some time because Ziyi Zhang had to deal with some of her scandals - topless pics from the beach which shocked people in her country and the more serious one about her holding back the donations for 2008 Sichuan earthquake victims.

Premiering in April 2011, "Your Highness" will be a medieval comedy about Thadeous (Danny McBride) who has spent his life watching his perfect older brother Fabious (James Franco) embark upon valiant journeys and win the hearts of his people. Tired of being passed over for adventure, adoration and the throne, he's settled for a life of wizard's weed, hard booze and easy maidens. But when Fabious' bride-to-be, Belladonna (Zoey Deschanel), gets kidnapped by the evil wizard Leezar (Justin Theroux), the king gives his deadbeat son an ultimatum: Man up and help rescue her or get cut off. The two brothers set out to free the princess joined by Isabel (Natalie Portman), an elusive warrior with a dangerous agenda of her own. Our dear Damian Lewis, from Your Favourite British Gent poll, will play "the head of a dastardly pack of knights" in the film :)

And don't forget to check out MY MUSIC GEMS (left) with Tinie Tempah and super amazing Eric Turner and the stunning melody in the chorus of "Written in the Stars".

Mulan in English? What a bummer! In addition, De Bont feels like much more of a risk to this adaptation. He has not directed at all for seven years and his last three directorial outings were stone-cold turkeys. Ziyi seems like an obvious fit but I think she also a bit desperate because rejected from the real Chinese produced "Mulan" film.

Mulan sounds like an exciting project. I'm looking forward to that one.

Your Highness looked like a comedy from the stills... which makes me think its more slapstick than intelligent humour. Oops...did I say a rude word? I'll say it again: Intelligent humour. Gasp! Mind you, I like all the monty python stuff and that's offbeat yet funny for no intelligent reason whatsoever. I'll be quiet now...

Mulan the cartoon soon to become Mulan the movie? You won me over when you said it was to be English language. I like that much better than reading subtitles. I'll be watching it by myself though. My wife doesn't like much that is Chinese. Personally, I kind of like hot Asian women.

your highness sounds like it could be funny in a completely silly kind of way! but zooey deschanel and natalie portman are two of my favorite actresses, so hooray! i bet my hubby would love this movie!

I wasn't able to post in the Duff entry, so I'll do so here. I think Duff seems like a good person in real life, and I'd much rather hang out with her than say, Paris Hilton. But isn't she too 2006 for this movie? Ok--just sayin'.

And the new Mulan could be great. Zhang was wonderful in Crouching Tiger and it'd be great to see her doing that kind of thing again.

Whether this time the mulan news is true or not, I, along tens of millions of Chinese, will for sure boycott her films, old and new, and any product she promotes, until she explains how much she raised for the 2008 earthquake and how come she hasn't donated any raised funds to the earthquake area and victims.

It's apalling that someone like her who embezzled earthquake donation dares to play our heroine mulan. what a joke!

But again, this could be just another fake news as her team's desperate effort to keep her in the news.

@SammyI don't know why you weren't able :) Yes, I agree with you, I also love young people who can be role models not the superficial ones.

@Anonymousyes, I guess we still don't know whether she did it or not, whether her team did it or what, but if it proves to be true and if she really stole money from people in need it would be horrible. Here in my country we just had a case of a celebrity who got arrested because she used the money from breast cancer research donations for her private purposes, and such cases demand the strongest of punishments!